Bred to 97, Released Into Danger: Why the Great Indian Bustard's Rewilding Is a Test, Not Yet a Recovery

The Birds Are Ready. The Landscape Is Not.

The commitment: Project GIB, running since 2013, set out to give the Great Indian Bustard a population that could live outside a breeding centre. The first captive-bred release on October 4 is meant to mark that turn.

The data: The wild population has sat between 120 and 150 for years. Today's estimate is about 140: roughly 130 in Rajasthan and 5 to 6 spread across three other states. Meanwhile, the captive stock at Sam and Ramdevra has reached 97. India's insurance population is now about two-thirds the size of its wild one. On numbers alone, breeding has worked.

What the

release numbers actually say - Two males, four to six months old, radio-tagged, going into enclosures of 15 to 20 sq km where at least 40 wild birds already live.

• Released captive-bred bustards survive at 10 to 30 percent a year. In plain arithmetic, release ten birds and expect one to three alive after twelve months.
• The species lays eggs only once every one to two years, so every loss is replaced slowly. This is why the release is a test, not a recovery. A breeding centre can produce the 97th bird. It cannot stop that bird from flying into a cable.

Where the

chain actually breaks It is worth being exact. The weak link is not breeding; the 97 birds prove that. It is not field science either. Earlier this year, WII swapped infertile eggs laid by wild females in Kutch with viable eggs from Rajasthan and the chick from the second attempt has survived its first three months in the wild.

The weak link is coordination between energy transmission and wildlife protection. Power lines built to carry renewable energy out of the Thar are now a leading cause of bustard deaths. The Supreme Court has ordered these lines buried underground outside Desert National Park by December 2027, roughly fourteen months after this pilot release.

The 2024-25 population survey, made public in July, shows the problem clearly. Bustards were found mostly on flat grasslands free of human settlements and renewable-energy infrastructure, around the park and the Pokhran Range.

In other words, the bird's usable range is now defined by where the cables are not.

What deserves credit The release design is careful, not symbolic:

• Soft release through an aviary at Sam, away from people.
• Timing at the end of the monsoon, when grassland insects are plentiful for chicks to feed on.
• Site choice inside enclosures that already hold wild birds, which released chicks can learn from.
• Radio-tagging, so every death becomes data rather than a mystery.

The insight for the exam Most answers will call this release a conservation success.

The sharper reading is that success has two separate meters. The captive count measures ex-situ capacity. The survival of released birds and the wild population trend measure recovery. The first meter reads 97. The second will not move until the landscape stops killing birds faster than the breeding centres can produce them and that depends on whether the undergrounding deadline is actually met.